A blog about writing, randomness, and zombies

I really wish I had seen I Am Legend before I wrote that “Ode to the Betterment of a Zombie” post, because it would have helped me out. I saw it for the first time with Boyfriend this weekend (Why yes, I am mimicking Allie from Hyperbole and a Half because she is awesome and I want to be awesome too). Apparently, there’s an alternate ending to the original, which apparently consists of Intense Mumbling Lady and Scared Mute Child escaping while Crazed Will Smith dies. Boyfriend was as confused as I was when Unexpected Alternate Ending showed us that zombies have feelings and don’t like it when you take all of their friends and unintentionally kill them with something meant to turn them human again, and if you do decide to kidnap all of their friends and unintentionally kill them with something meant to turn them human again, they will hunt you down, cause you to set your house on fire, infect your dog, and bash their skulls against your bullet-proof glass until you hand them back the girl with the dragon–er, butterfly tattoo. Trust me, you don’t want a horde of hippie zombies bashing their skulls against your bullet proof glass. All they want is peace and love, man. And all the Will Smith overlord wants to do is bring them down. They’re just fighting against the establishment. In all seriousness, that ending only made partial sense, and even then it seemed incredibly forced. Sure, the zombified people still had some higher brain functions, which allowed them to mimic Crazed Will Smith’s traps, and it’s obvious that they operate under the strict direction of a leader, but by the end of the movie they’ve somehow developed complex human feelings like love and fear and all of that is just dumped on you at the end.

In other news, my weekend was amazing. There was Boyfriend and I huddled under a tree in the middle of a Dorney Park Downpour, trying to enjoy custard and an Icee with so many raindrops in it that there were little holes in our snacks. It was pretty much the best day ever *insert little anime smiley face thing here* And there goes WordPress killing the moment by suggesting I link this blog to every Wikipedia page about Will Smith, zombies, and Icee’s ever created. Icees? Icii? Is there a plural for Icee/Icii? Fine, slushies. Are you happy now, gods of ambiguous grammatical rules?

Also, “Zombies in a Downpour” is pretty much the best name for a blog ever. Someone should make one.

Seriously, Zombie, get out of that trash can. You are not trash. You do not even have a banana peel on your head. It is imbedded in your arm from the last time we had to sew it back together. Remember? You said it looked pretty. At least, I THINK you said it looked pretty. Honestly, all I heard was “Unggggrabllflarrrgbraaaaaaaainsssss….” Really, Zombie, you need to take some speech classes. No one is going to understand you if you keep talking like a three year old cavechild. And you need to get a better suit than the one you have now. It’s all tattered and covered in entrails. How do you expect to get a job like that, Zombie? You’re never going to get that fancy office with a window and an espresso machine unless you dress for it. And we might want to get some exfoliating products for your skin. It’s looking kinda green and peely. Seriously, I can see your bones through it. And we need to talk about your diet, Zombie. Brains are a good source of protein, but you need to get some fiber and citrus fruits in your diet. Everytime I see you, another clump of hair or piece of tooth or lump of flesh has fallen off you. You are not a pirate, Zombie. You probably can’t even get scurvy. And is that a rat on your head? Get off his head, rat! You are not a hairpiece, and your hair is mangy enough as it is. Zombie, you should know better than to let creatures jump on your head. You know how easily it falls off. Remember that time when that feather fell on your head and we had to reattach it using duct tape and glue? Remember how the only glue we had was glitter glue? You’re still shimmery in the sunlight. This isn’t right, Zombie. You are not Edward Cullen and zombies don’t sparkle. And when was the last time you got your hair cut? It’s absolutely dreadful. Really, there are patches missing everywhere and I can see your brain through your scalp. I think you need to cover up that extreme bald spot, Zombie. It’s not attractive. How do you expect to attract the lady zombies when you look like death? The ladies want you to smell nice, too. You smell like a deceased pile of garbage-infested rodents. At least wear a flower in your lapel, Zombie–or even a scented handkerchief. Would it kill you to try some flair once in a while? And don’t take your dates to Old Man Grumblefeld’s farm. They don’t want to work for their food, they want it to be completely prepared for them. And they don’t want to be shot at either! I know you’re undead and everything, but seriously, Zombie, getting shot in the face with a shotgun round isn’t fun at all. You really don’t know how to treat a lady, do you? You can’t just go up to her and start casually nomming on her brains. You have to show her that you respect her and show her a good time first. Let her nom on your brains for a change, Zombie. Do you have any sense of gentlemanly behavior at all? No wonder you could never hold down a job. Remember that time you tried to eat Bob in accounting? He didn’t appreciate that, Zombie. Not one bit. That’s why your boss fired you. Eating people is wrong, especially when they’re still alive. You need to get with it, Zombie. There’s a whole world out there to enjoy, and all you want to do is eat any living thing that crosses your path.

To all of you who endured this monologue, thank you. You are scholars and gentlemen. Or gentlewomen.

Except this party is like moving into a brand new house. And it’s haunted. By the ghost of a five year old with a creepy smile on his face who also doesn’t understand basic concepts like “personal space” and “alone time” and “I really hate being stared at by a spooky thing all day”.

You might have noticed something different about my blog. Like the fact that it doesn’t look anything like itself. And it’s linked to WordPress. And pretty much everything except the posts are different. Well, that’s because Blogger (a.ka. Google) decided that it hates me and my posts. All of them. Luckily for me though, this kindly gentleman named Mr. WordPress took me by the arm and showed me all the wondrous possibilities of this new world of blogging. I may not be able to change my fonts, but being able to actually post–and with all of the same features Blogger gave me (save changing fonts) is far better than hoping Google will actually fix the situation. I mean, I have important stuff to say, people! I’ve been doing interesting things! Like…like…interesting things! Plus I still haven’t finished Breaking Dawn! Not that I actually want to, but I still am…how can I blog about the torture I’m going through if Blogger hates me?

I do have something to say to you, though, Mr. WordPress. See, your little link and tag recommendations leave me both scared and confused. Am I that much of a blogging hipster that you can’t suggest any other post-related links than your own site, the most hated name of Blogger, Google, and a link to Wikipedia where people can discover what personal space is? Oh, wait, I didn’t see that link to Amazon so people can buy Breaking Dawn. I would definitely suggest that to someone. I also would like to know what ShoutMeLoud is*, why you suggested it as a tag, why it has terrible grammar, and why you removed it once I mentioned it. Not cool, Mr. WordPress. Your creepiness is almost to the level of Facebook’s wretched advertisements.

You think you’ve won, Google. You think you’ve finally rid yourself of me. Well, just you wait, Google. Someday, somehow, I will end you for this. You might want to sleep with one eye open. Oh, and Mr. WordPress? I’m not that into Twilight. Please don’t suggest placing an image of the cover of Breaking Dawn on this blog, m’kay? There’s a lot you need to learn about me, but I’m sure we’ll get along juuuuust fine.

*Disclaimer: I could easily Google what ShoutMeLoud is, but a) I’m too lazy and b) Google and I aren’t exactly on the best of terms right now…

Actually, this time of the summer is more like a “Time Cataclysm”–you know, that place where the weeks past and the weeks ahead all melt into one giant chunk of time and you have no idea what day it is anymore? Well, the realization finally hit me that I have a little over a month before I start classes again and that I should probably start collecting the necessary items.

Now, I hate shopping for clothes. A lot of girls like it, but I don’t. I hate the art of searching and searching for just the right pieces, then spending even more time trying them on, discarding what doesn’t work, and repeating the process until finally I’m finished. It doesn’t help that my process isn’t exactly the most efficient. Basically, I start by circling the area that holds my size looking for anything that catches my eye, similar to how a shark circles a cage waiting for that pesky human in the diving suit to decide to pop out. Then I find a couple of things I like and continue the circle because I might find something more appealing and I wouldn’t want to waste time trying something on that I’m not going to buy. Then finally I find some stuff and try them on. Most of the time, this works and I can leave. When that doesn’t happen and I have to repeat the process a few times, I tend to get frustrated and ready to leave with whatever I can make look decent. Luckily though, I only have one more trip like this. Then I can focus on other things that don’t involve fabric.

At least something good came out of today. I sat in the car listening to the “How to Train Your Dragon” soundtrack (which, by the way, is AMAZING), I came up with this little metaphor to use in my newest novel project (The quote is something a much-younger Protagonist remembers her mother saying to her): “Love is like the keys on a piano. There are many different tones and scales, but you can’t make beautiful music by trying to force one key to do all the work.”

Enjoy that little tidbit, folks! I’m sure that would hold more weight if I were actually a famous author, but since I’m not I can at least pretend that this is extremely meaningful. Right?

I’m at an impasse, folks. I don’t know whether I want to remove Summers with Vampires or not! Because once I’m done with Twilight, there won’t be any more vampires. Only Harry Potter and Narnia. See, I decided that it would drive me crazy trying to write an entire thesis about how terrible Twilight is, and that I might get a little too…invested…in my paper. So instead, I’m going to write about how the series will be unlikely to make it into the classic literature canon–probably using the Harry Potter and Narnia novels as juxtaposition for that argument. I’ll still be reading those other books I once had listed to the right. But not for a while. Trust me, I fully intend on reading all of those books I acquired.

Thus, my dilemma is what to do with SwV. Keep it? I’m definitely finishing out the saga–no worries on that. But what about when all the Twilight fun is gone? Rename it and keep plugging away? Maybe. But how much can I bewail my life if I’m reading good books? Who wants to read a blog where the blogger is perfectly content with the books they’re reading?

Basically, once Breaking Dawn is complete, I’ll leave SwV up. It may be dead for quite some time, but I will get around to those Ann Rice novels eventually. And I will eventually read Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Because who wouldn’t want to hear about Honest Abe’s vampire-staking shenanigans? I guess this is just a bit of an update concerning my uncertainty, but be content for now in that SwV will continue for a time, at least. Although being happy for me as the victim that I’ll get away from reading The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner would also be a nice gesture.

It’s good to be home after an amazing (if not tiring) trip to New York City. But no, I didn’t hit Fifth Avenue, I actually learned some things. Such as:

1. In New York, “A couple of blocks, you can’t miss it” means “ten plus blocks, you’ll be so disillusioned by the time you get there that you can’t help but miss it. Seriously though, the view from the Empire State Building (once we made it all those blocks!) was worth it.

2. It’s really, really fun to pretend-choke Edward Cullen and pretend-punch him in the face. This is why Madame Tussaud is my hero. Also my hero is the young child who walked up to the figure and literally punched it.

3. Severus Snape is probably so emo because he realized that his black robes have a purple glint to them. He is not Dolores Umbridge. The Half-Blood Prince demands pure black robes to match his soul. Poor Snape, the entire world is out to increase his emo-ness (I was lucky to get into the Harry Potter Exhibition–it’s leaving this September).

4. Pretty much every country is represented in New York’s tourist population. There were people from everywhere, from Britain to Russia. It was actually really neat so see so many different cultures in one place.

In other news, the wax museum was probably the highlight of the trip, outside of the Harry Potter Exhibition. Everything in there looks so real; I kept waiting for someone to be like “Lol, jk I’m actually here!” Of course, then they’d be swarmed by a bunch of people who automatically go into hungry shark frenzy mode in the presence of a celebrity. So maybe that wouldn’t be their best option.

New York is definitely a blast, but I think I’ll stick to being a small town girl. No, I will not sing the song everyone is thinking right now. One song per post, people, don’t be greedy. Also, there was a third highlight of my trip: Portal 2 billboard. Okay, no, not really. I just need to have at least one half-baked reference per post. Don’t judge me!

Well, I’ve finally got a reasonable rough draft (and by finally I mean I did all of this last week and just now decided to blog about it). So…170 pages isn’t bad. And I’ll still probably have stuff to do on my work to make it better. Also, I will correct myself: For someone whose last novel turned out to be about 250 pages of sheer terrible writing that Stephanie Meyer would be proud of, 170 pages is amazing. But don’t cry, large tome of deleted rubbish. Through your sacrifice, a new tale has been born that will hopefully more than make up for your lackluster existence. Yes, that’s where the title comes in:

Without going into detail (because I’m ridiculously and horribly paranoid like that), I do have another story in the works–even a series, possibly, although I am terrible at actually making a series when I set my mind to it. Of course, this is after about a week of trying to figure out an acceptable plot to go around a set of characters, but hopefully with all that out of the way, I can manage something along the lines of what I will call “horrific science fantasy”. So, something different hopefully. Because I hear “different” is good in the publishing world…*insert obligatory smiley face here*

In other news, I had to buy New Moon brand new from Walmart. It was probably the saddest day of my life, and I have never been so embarrassed and self conscious when paying for merchandise from Walmart. Or anywhere, for that matter. The ambiguity and secrecy of the Internet is not a gift to be taken lightly folks. On the Internet, no one knows what you look like and therefore no one can stalk you to flog and burn you for even thinking about buying the Books-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named.

In other news: I am officially Team Hedge Maze (Harry Potter 4). Not only is Cedric Diggory as fully deserving of the Maze’s fury as Edward Cullen, but the Maze is just so tasteful and artful in its chosen method of dispatching the future vampMeyer. Props also go to Mr. Lord Voldemort and Mr. Harry Potter, the former for his sarcastic dig at Mr. Diggory’s physical attractiveness and the latter for basically leading Mr. Diggory to his death in effect by saving his life. Well done, Harry. Your extreme heroism has worked in everyone’s favor once more.

I…I did it. I finally, after about two years of loving labor, completed the first draft of my novel! The last few dozen papers of the handwritten portion of the latter chapters are strewn across my table. I can’t believe it’s finally on its way to completion. Of course, now comes the part where I go back and edit my little heart out before sending it off into the publishing world, but I feel as though I’ve made it over Mt. Everest. I didn’t expect to make it so far this summer, especially not with my thesis reading and my job. I must say though, it’s looking pretty good so far. Let’s just hope I can convince an agent or publisher of that.

Now comes the hard part: I’m bored. I like to wait a bit before revising so that I’m looking at the draft with fresh eyes. And while I’ve got another idea brewing in my mind, I’m finding it difficult to wrap those ideas up on paper. Also, New Moon still hasn’t been shipped to me yet, so while I’m extremely thankful for this, I’m also starting to worry that I won’t have as much read this summer as I would like.

But now is not the time for mourning the Twilight-themed terror that is to come; now is the time to celebrate an accomplishment for me that I thought would take another school year to complete. Who knows, maybe by next summer I’ll have finally begun sending the manuscript out into the world. Or maybe there will be cake–preferably the kind that isn’t a lie. I think my next project will be some kind of science fiction horror-type novel…that should be fun. And scary. At least I’ll know it’s scary if I scare myself: I did manage to make myself cry with this novel. And yes, I am assuming that that is a good thing.

Ah, well, I guess that next project means revisiting some YouTube content of Silent Hill. Anyone who hasn’t heard of L0rdVega has never truly browsed YouTube.

Thanks to a wide-range Internet outage and proper motivation, I actually have just four chapters left in my novel! Unless I come up with a fifth, of course. But that’s not the point. The point is, I just need to write my final conflict and the closing scenes and my novel–my first good novel–will be complete. This is a big thing for me. I’ve been trying to get to this point for about a year now. So much meticulous planning went into beginning this novel, even though much of that planning was morphed into something much better in the process, and I even made the difficult decision to obliterate my other completed novel along the way. Sure, I’ve still got work to do, but this feels like a milestone. I’ve written 130 pages of something I’ve created, and I’m actually proud of the result so far.

And for the first time, I actually have several new projects to choose from. I think I know what my next endeavor will be–and I might even try first person. Most importantly, I am ecstatic about this accomplishment. I know everyone writes differently, but I definitely recommend at least some planning before you write. At least get to know your characters as if you’ve lived with them all your life. That was my downfall in my first novel–I didn’t know who my players were, and as a result, their personalities changed as the story progressed. It’s also wise to come up with a story that you know can last through 100 pages or more. My first novel’s plot couldn’t, and I ended up splicing together several different pieces of that story just to bring up the page count. Obviously, it didn’t work, and I made something so terribly confusing even I hated it. Luckily, this tale isn’t like that. It’s the same main story with a bunch of little branching tales, all converging on that main character. It’s like a spiderweb, and I love it.

So, I’m happy–in case any of you were wondering about that. And I hope the last four chapters will be as good as their predecessors. Well, I might need to bring the style up to speed with the rest of the book. For some reason, by the time I reach half of the novel, my style just skyrockets in quality compared to the previous writing. Guess I’ve got a long road of editing ahead of me…

So, I was standing in the shower (because, you know, what else is there to do in a small space like that?) and as usual, my mind started to wander. I realized that, by the time I finish grad school it will be close to 2020. All of the friends whom I shared nostalgic conversations with will be in the workplace spreading the topic to their offices or job sites or wherever they may end up. In 2020, all of the 2002 and 2003 babies will be in college. Something about that is sad to me. It means that the place where my friends and I reminisced about things like old Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network cartoons we used to watch, video games we used to play, and movies we used to love will be filled with students recalling the rubbish that’s largely in the media now–things like Hannah Montana, Justin Bieber, Twilight, and so many other childhood favorites that (at least in the book category) all seem roughly the same. Ok, I’ll admit, I haven’t read a childrens’ book since I was, well, a child, but does anyone really read Junie B. Jones anymore? Boxcar Children? The Magic Treehouse? Goosebumps? Those books that are supposed to be like real diaries but they’re not? I’m glad to see that Harry Potter still occupies suggestions for what kids will want to read, because even though I haven’t read them (please don’t stone me, please don’t stone me!) they’re still part of my childhood. I don’t read much contemporary fiction. I’ve found it to be mostly similar in story–nothing has really captured my attention. I read nonfiction (let’s not go into all of the genres that spans) and the classics. For me, old fiction reminds me that there were people who cared that almost every typo was cleared from the book and that every line makes perfect sense. It reminds me that there were people who cared about the written word–and the fact that they’re still in existence makes me believe that there are still people who care about good, quality books.

In fact, I wish I still had all the books I read as a child. I think I’ll go find them and read them again. Hey, if you’re never too old for candy, then you’re never too old to reread books you loved as a child.